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What, then, is the achieved Sage?
One whose Act is determined by the higher phase of the Soul.
It does not suffice to perfect virtue to have only this Spirit
[equivalent in all men] as cooperator in the life: the acting
force in the Sage is the Intellective Principle [the diviner
phase of the human Soul] which therefore is itself his presiding
spirit or is guided by a presiding spirit of its own, no other
than the very Divinity.
But this exalts the Sage above the Intellectual Principle as
possessing for presiding spirit the Prior to the Intellectual
Principle: how then does it come about that he was not, from the
very beginning, all that he now is?
The failure is due to the disturbance caused by birth- though,
before all reasoning, there exists the instinctive movement
reaching out towards its own.
On instinct which the Sage finally rectifies in every respect?
Not in every respect: the Soul is so constituted that its
life-history and its general tendency will answer not merely to
its own nature but also to the conditions among which it acts.
The presiding Spirit, as we read, conducting a Soul to the
Underworld ceases to be its guardian- except when the Soul
resumes [in its later choice] the former state of life.
But, meanwhile, what happens to it?
From the passage [in the Phaedo] which tells how it presents the
Soul to judgement we gather that after the death it resumes the
form it had before the birth, but that then, beginning again, it
is present to the Souls in their punishment during the period of
their renewed life- a time not so much of living as of expiation.
But the Souls that enter into brute bodies, are they controlled
by some thing less than this presiding Spirit? No: theirs is
still a Spirit, but an evil or a foolish one.
And the Souls that attain to the highest?
Of these higher Souls some live in the world of Sense, some above
it: and those in the world of Sense inhabit the Sun or another of
the planetary bodies; the others occupy the fixed Sphere [above
the planetary] holding the place they have merited through having
lived here the superior life of reason.
We must understand that, while our Souls do contain an
Intellectual Kosmos they also contain a subordination of various
forms like that of the Kosmic Soul. The world Soul is distributed
so as to produce the fixed sphere and the planetary circuits
corresponding to its graded powers: so with our Souls; they must
have their provinces according to their different powers,
parallel to those of the World Soul: each must give out its own
special act; released, each will inhabit there a star consonant
with the temperament and faculty in act within and constituting
the principle of the life; and this star or the next highest
power will stand to them as God or more exactly as tutelary
spirit.
But here some further precision is needed.
Emancipated Souls, for the whole period of their sojourn there
above, have transcended the Spirit-nature and the entire fatality
of birth and all that belongs to this visible world, for they
have taken up with them that Hypostasis of the Soul in which the
desire of earthly life is vested. This Hypostasis may be
described as the distributable Soul, for it is what enters bodily
forms and multiplies itself by this division among them. But its
distribution is not a matter of magnitudes; wherever it is
present, there is the same thing present entire; its unity can
always be reconstructed: when living things- animal or vegetal-
produce their constant succession of new forms, they do so in
virtue of the self-distribution of this phase of the Soul, for it
must be as much distributed among the new forms as the
propagating originals are. In some cases it communicates its
force by permanent presence the life principle in plants for
instance- in other cases it withdraws after imparting its virtue-
for instance where from the putridity of dead animal or vegetable
matter a multitudinous birth is produced from one organism.
A power corresponding to this in the All must reach down and
co-operate in the life of our world- in fact the very same power.
If the Soul returns to this Sphere it finds itself under the same
Spirit or a new, according to the life it is to live. With this
Spirit it embarks in the skiff of the universe: the "spindle of
Necessity" then takes control and appoints the seat for the
voyage, the seat of the lot in life.
The Universal circuit is like a breeze, and the voyager, still or
stirring, is carried forward by it. He has a hundred varied
experiences, fresh sights, changing circumstances, all sorts of
events. The vessel itself furnishes incident, tossing as it
drives on. And the voyager also acts of himself in virtue of that
individuality which he retains because he is on the vessel in his
own person and character. Under identical circumstances
individuals answer very differently in their movements and acts:
hence it comes about that, be the occurrences and conditions of
life similar or dissimilar, the result may differ from man to
man, as on the other hand a similar result may be produced by
dissimilar conditions: this (personal answer to incident) it is
that constitutes destiny.
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